From email 3-19-2010. This is a great question and answer for everyone to read.
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I just got that 100′ CAT6 10/100/1000 cable tonight.
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You know that Cat5e supports gigabit right? That might have saved you a little money.
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Did you know Media Center doesn’t come on anything before Vista? That sucks.
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Wrong. XP Media Center Edition has been around since shortly after XP was released. I have a copy of it for Dell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_editions#Media_Center_Edition
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I want to get a wireless N router but have seen where g devices connected to an N router are no better than a G router. This prompts me to look at “True Dual Band” routers.
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We discussed that when we discussed 100/1000 on ethernet. You don’t have to get a “true dual band” – that is marketing bullshit. All N access points will fall back to G or B on devices that don’t support N. That is part of the N spec.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n#Backward_compatibility
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keep coming back to this Linksys WRT610N. It is simultaneous, has a USB port for a network USB drive where I could store all my music, audiobooks, and the rest of that crap.
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Of course I’m a fan of Linksys stuff. That model has some good/bad reviews. I’m going to say you will probably be fine with it.
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Need faster down and upload speeds if I am going to be streaming TV on my TV through Media Extender and Xbox
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While I hate DSL and love cable, if you are streaming from your Media Extender directly to your TV, then you ‘net connection doesn’t matter. That would fall under the internal network bandwidth – and thus gigabit and wireless n would help.
However, if you are going to be streaming from Hulu.com or wherever to your TV, then having more ‘net bandwidth is definitely a plus.
By the way, I have 20Mbs down and 2Mbs up now.
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I was also thinking about checking out one of those TV tuners for your computer… what do you think of those?
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I think they work great, especially for displaying ‘net content on your TV or ripping your DVD’s to your pc and playing them directly from a media box.
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My Dell Inspiron 1525 (that you have the twin), can we upgrade the internal network card to an N+ card instead of a G, or would I do better with a adapter hanging on the side of the machine?
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Nope – you have to add a USB card, PCMCIA, or ExpressCard type.
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the hard drive for the laptop, its 250Gigs, can we make that much bigger and still keep the outside shell of the laptop?
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Yep – the hard drive form factor is the same for a larger capacity. I’ve got a 500GB in my dell right now.
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=380&name=Laptop-Hard-Drives